I had an old airport express by Apple that I recently upgraded to a newer one... they both work relatively well but they both have absurdly awful range. My signal on wifi loses facetime at 10ft (seriously). Are there any good routers within the ~$150 range that have the newest protocols, are fast and can happily maintain numerous devices on one network?

Don't mix them up: Mikrotik Wifi is crap. Ubiquiti Routers are crap. TP Link routers and wireless ... well, aren't bad for the price, but doesn't hold a candle to what you can do with Mikrotik and Ubiquiti.

But for their three respective strengths, those brands outperform everything else up to 5 times the price.

Saying UBNT routers are crap is a bit of a stretch. In what way? Probably overkill really for most folks on here. I also run one, but I have a crap DSL line and is more than adequate for that. Not to mention that you get that single pane of glass which is a nice sell.

Saying UBNT routers are crap is a bit of a stretch. In what way? Probably overkill really for most folks on here. I also run one, but I have a crap DSL line and is more than adequate for that. Not to mention that you get that single pane of glass which is a nice sell.

I run an EdgeRouter X w/ 2 AC PRO access points. My setup has performed amazingly since install and I think the router is great.

Asus RT-AC3200 with the Asuswrt-Merlin firmware is a great value without getting far into overkill territory. When placed in a good location, it will get you great signal everywhere, unless you live in a concrete bunker. Frequently have 30+ WiFi devices and 200 clients (VMs) using it without issue.

Asus RT-AC3200 with the Asuswrt-Merlin firmware is a great value without getting far into overkill territory. When placed in a good location, it will get you great signal everywhere, unless you live in a concrete bunker. Frequently have 30+ WiFi devices and 200 clients (VMs) using it without issue.

The "AiProtection" features are awesome and work pretty well.

I don't believe there is a single wifi router that can cover my full house. I have tried quite a few.

Focusing on coverage is just naive. Proper wireless design focuses on how many wireless clients are connected, what is the nature of the network traffic flowing over the wireless network, and the concentration of the wireless clients at any given physical location.

Some points to consider about wireless networks. The wireless NICs in mobile devices do not have the same transmit power as an AP/wireless router. Because of this, you may be seeing full bars on the wireless client but at the AP/wireless router, the signal from the wireless client will many times be marginal. As a reminder, network traffic is based on 2 way communication. In the above scenario, the data transmission will get to the wireless client at the best available performance, but the data transmission from the wireless client to the AP/wireless router will be subpar causing longer transmission times. Which follows into the next point about wireless networks. Wireless operates as a half duplex system. This means only one device can transmit on the RF space at any given time. The exception to this is multi user MIMO which only allows for multiple data transmissions from the AP to the client not vice versa. And both the AP and the wireless client must support multi user MIMO. So with the device transmitting at sub optimal wireless speeds (wireless speeds will drop as a function of distance and RF interference), this wireless client will hold up the entire wireless network operating on the AP/wireless router. No other device can transmit over the wireless network until this client is finished.

This is the reason why proper wireless networks are designed with multiple APs that focus on the points I gave in the first paragraph. And this is why you see multi mesh systems such as Google WiFi, Linksys Velop, Eero, and Netgear Orbi to name a few.

If you're not looking towards planning for and using multi-AP systems, you're living in the proverbial stone age with wireless technology and will always be chasing network performance.

__________________

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lups

We might not be in an agreement on Trump, but I'll be the first penis chaser here to say I'll rather take it up in the ass than to argue with you on this.

Focusing on coverage is just naive. Proper wireless design focuses on how many wireless clients are connected, what is the nature of the network traffic flowing over the wireless network, and the concentration of the wireless clients at any given physical location.

Some points to consider about wireless networks. The wireless NICs in mobile devices do not have the same transmit power as an AP/wireless router. Because of this, you may be seeing full bars on the wireless client but at the AP/wireless router, the signal from the wireless client will many times be marginal. As a reminder, network traffic is based on 2 way communication. In the above scenario, the data transmission will get to the wireless client at the best available performance, but the data transmission from the wireless client to the AP/wireless router will be subpar causing longer transmission times. Which follows into the next point about wireless networks. Wireless operates as a half duplex system. This means only one device can transmit on the RF space at any given time. The exception to this is multi user MIMO which only allows for multiple data transmissions from the AP to the client not vice versa. And both the AP and the wireless client must support multi user MIMO. So with the device transmitting at sub optimal wireless speeds (wireless speeds will drop as a function of distance and RF interference), this wireless client will hold up the entire wireless network operating on the AP/wireless router. No other device can transmit over the wireless network until this client is finished.

This is the reason why proper wireless networks are designed with multiple APs that focus on the points I gave in the first paragraph. And this is why you see multi mesh systems such as Google WiFi, Linksys Velop, Eero, and Netgear Orbi to name a few.

If you're not looking towards planning for and using multi-AP systems, you're living in the proverbial stone age with wireless technology and will always be chasing network performance.

I think you're doing yourself a disservice there by saying it's not about coverage. It absolutely is about coverage. Take ANY wireless site survey and what do you see? A coverage heat map. Most office environments aren't THAT high density in terms of people. And if they are, there still aren't that many devices other than mobile phones which won't be consuming the bulk of traffic at any given time. Of course, you'll have laptops, but most of the time, they'd be docked. Your highest concentration of wireless in this case would be a conference room. Do you see multiple APs in the ceiling there? No, as you have plenty of coverage in that location and the AP will handle the density as well. Of those, some will be on a corporate network, but many more will be personally owned devices and on a guest network. A single AP can handle multiple devices relatively easily, but as you point out, those mobile devices can't reach the levels of TX power the APs can, so your AP density increases to...increase coverage.

It's all about the environment in which the service will be deployed. That in itself will dictate whether you can get away with a single AP (SOHO or residential) or multiple (larger corporate environment).

Mesh networks are even worse for performance as they cut available bandwidth even further. The further downstream an AP is from the main AP, the more latency and reduction in available bandwidth to clients on that AP exists. If possible, always hardwire an AP.

In my last house, I was able to easily get away with a single AP. One, it was an old house that I'd rented, and couldn't wire anything and two, I didn't need to worry about it. My house that I'm in how was properly wired and I'm running five APs, two outdoor and three indoor. I need another one indoor as I don't have the coverage required in one area of the house. Has nothing to do with density.

As someone who sees the internet-side behavior of Apple Airports, I can tell you with certainty that they are misbehaving pieces of garbage, sold and supported by an organization that refuses to even listen to comments from their net peers.

I have an iPhone and a Macbook, I'm not an Apple hater; but Airports are garbage.

I think you're doing yourself a disservice there by saying it's not about coverage. It absolutely is about coverage. Take ANY wireless site survey and what do you see? A coverage heat map. Most office environments aren't THAT high density in terms of people. And if they are, there still aren't that many devices other than mobile phones which won't be consuming the bulk of traffic at any given time. Of course, you'll have laptops, but most of the time, they'd be docked. Your highest concentration of wireless in this case would be a conference room. Do you see multiple APs in the ceiling there? No, as you have plenty of coverage in that location and the AP will handle the density as well. Of those, some will be on a corporate network, but many more will be personally owned devices and on a guest network. A single AP can handle multiple devices relatively easily, but as you point out, those mobile devices can't reach the levels of TX power the APs can, so your AP density increases to...increase coverage.

It's all about the environment in which the service will be deployed. That in itself will dictate whether you can get away with a single AP (SOHO or residential) or multiple (larger corporate environment).

Mesh networks are even worse for performance as they cut available bandwidth even further. The further downstream an AP is from the main AP, the more latency and reduction in available bandwidth to clients on that AP exists. If possible, always hardwire an AP.

In my last house, I was able to easily get away with a single AP. One, it was an old house that I'd rented, and couldn't wire anything and two, I didn't need to worry about it. My house that I'm in how was properly wired and I'm running five APs, two outdoor and three indoor. I need another one indoor as I don't have the coverage required in one area of the house. Has nothing to do with density.

And I think you're doing yourself a disservice by following the old model of coverage. It is all about services/density of clients. When you look at heat maps, it's to determine boundaries of when APs start to conflict with each other. A proper wireless system will have the ability to monitor RF output of each AP and adjust transmit levels to prevent one AP from clobbering the other. This reduces the association issues between client devices and APs. Along with reducing "friendly fire" interference.

Your example of a conference room is extremely limited. In a single conference room, the fact there is a single AP placed there means that the wireless engineer understands the potential concentration of wireless clients in that room. Hence that AP is to service that location instead of having neighboring APs pick up the load. I also assume you've never done a wireless deployment for a large conference held at a large hotel/resort venue. I guarantee you won't be seeing a single AP supporting 300+ attendees.

Your assertion of a single AP handling multiple devices again is too general. Yes, APs can handle multiple devices. But there is a practical limit based on the network traffic it is handling. Some of the APs I've had experience with can handle 50 wireless clients. But that is for non consistent wireless traffic such as web surfing. When you throw on multicast traffic such as video streaming or latency sensitive communications such as VoIP/teleconferencing, that number drops to 15 to 20.

Your example of your home is an example of a limitation of the wireless client in transmit power. This isn't a situation where "coverage" is the problem. Is a situation of dealing with the weak power transmission of mobile devices. You placing an AP at that location is more to deal with the reception issue of the particular device. The false premise of blasting as hot a signal you can from an AP or wireless router has fed into the problem everyone is experiencing with 2.4 GHz networks. The issue of adjacent RF interference. Because of the limited number of non-overlapping channels available for 2.4, you run into constant situations where people are complaining they're having wireless problems even if their device is sitting right next to the AP/router. The move to 5 GHz is to get away from this RF interference issue as there are more non overlapping channels available. But even 5 GHz is starting to see interference problems with more and more devices making the move for more channel space and due to the move to 802.11AC. This is why a new IEEE standard is being worked called 802.11ad which proposes to use 60GHz as the carrier frequency. The premise is again not about blasting a signal as far as one can. But to have localized high speed microcells which won't cause all these interference problems.

On the topic of wireless mesh networks, yes, I know about the halving of available bandwidth per hop. But these topologies are way better than the garbage range extenders being used by many to solve a reception problem from wireless clients. The wireless mesh systems I see being used in corporate systems use 5 GHz as the backhaul and 2.4 GHz for client connectivity. This eliminates the issue you've pointed out.

Since we're talking about home networks, my home network at one point had 4 different wireless solutions running at once: Aruba Networks controller based, Aruba Networks IAP, SonicWall, and Aerohive. I have since pulled the IAP and Aerohive systems offline. The Aruba controller based system is running a 7008 controller with 3 AP225, 1 AP215, and an AP105 for RF spectrum monitoring; this system is broadcasting 3 SSIDs. I also have a RAP3 I take on travel with me which establishes an encrypted layer 2 GRE tunnel back to my home network that allows me to extend my wireless at home to any location through the Internet.

__________________

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lups

We might not be in an agreement on Trump, but I'll be the first penis chaser here to say I'll rather take it up in the ass than to argue with you on this.

And I think you're doing yourself a disservice by following the old model of coverage. It is all about services/density of clients. When you look at heat maps, it's to determine boundaries of when APs start to conflict with each other. A proper wireless system will have the ability to monitor RF output of each AP and adjust transmit levels to prevent one AP from clobbering the other. This reduces the association issues between client devices and APs. Along with reducing "friendly fire" interference.

I think we're talking about different sides of the same coin. Agreed, a proper system will do this. I've worked with Meraki more extensively, and to a smaller extent Ubiquiti, though that system leaves a lot on the table. While what you wrote is true, and in many cases, the AP placement density is generally higher than it needs to be, at least the surveys I've been a part of. Whether you have more APs at reduced power, or fewer at higher, in a non tech shop, that's somewhat irrelevant.

Quote:

Originally Posted by zx10guy

Your example of a conference room is extremely limited. In a single conference room, the fact there is a single AP placed there means that the wireless engineer understands the potential concentration of wireless clients in that room. Hence that AP is to service that location instead of having neighboring APs pick up the load. I also assume you've never done a wireless deployment for a large conference held at a large hotel/resort venue. I guarantee you won't be seeing a single AP supporting 300+ attendees.

Your assertion of a single AP handling multiple devices again is too general. Yes, APs can handle multiple devices. But there is a practical limit based on the network traffic it is handling. Some of the APs I've had experience with can handle 50 wireless clients. But that is for non consistent wireless traffic such as web surfing. When you throw on multicast traffic such as video streaming or latency sensitive communications such as VoIP/teleconferencing, that number drops to 15 to 20.

When you're dealing with multicast, which isn't a normal end user use case for streaming video in a corporate environment, or masses (what number would that be? 20? 40?) of RTP traffic, then agreed, it's something of a different consideration. Keep in mind, the context of this thread is about a guy in a house. Similar to what we'd done in a previous role, we'd proxy these video streams via BlueCoat. These streams weren't multicast, but in the context of an AP, I don't see much difference in multicast vs unicast in terms of number of clients receiving the stream and load on the AP. But I've also not had to deal with multicast over wireless, thus don't have a use case for it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by zx10guy

Your example of your home is an example of a limitation of the wireless client in transmit power. This isn't a situation where "coverage" is the problem. Is a situation of dealing with the weak power transmission of mobile devices. You placing an AP at that location is more to deal with the reception issue of the particular device. The false premise of blasting as hot a signal you can from an AP or wireless router has fed into the problem everyone is experiencing with 2.4 GHz networks. The issue of adjacent RF interference. Because of the limited number of non-overlapping channels available for 2.4, you run into constant situations where people are complaining they're having wireless problems even if their device is sitting right next to the AP/router. The move to 5 GHz is to get away from this RF interference issue as there are more non overlapping channels available. But even 5 GHz is starting to see interference problems with more and more devices making the move for more channel space and due to the move to 802.11AC. This is why a new IEEE standard is being worked called 802.11ad which proposes to use 60GHz as the carrier frequency. The premise is again not about blasting a signal as far as one can. But to have localized high speed microcells which won't cause all these interference problems.

There again, it was taken out of context, and again, different sides of the same coin. If one AP wouldn't cut it, you'd add another one, but can still call it an issue of coverage. Regardless of whether the client can still technically see the AP, but not vice versa, in either case, the client won't connect, so you add an AP to increase coverage.

And yes, I'm familiar with WiGig.

Quote:

Originally Posted by zx10guy

On the topic of wireless mesh networks, yes, I know about the halving of available bandwidth per hop. But these topologies are way better than the garbage range extenders being used by many to solve a reception problem from wireless clients. The wireless mesh systems I see being used in corporate systems use 5 GHz as the backhaul and 2.4 GHz for client connectivity. This eliminates the issue you've pointed out.

Since we're talking about home networks, my home network at one point had 4 different wireless solutions running at once: Aruba Networks controller based, Aruba Networks IAP, SonicWall, and Aerohive. I have since pulled the IAP and Aerohive systems offline. The Aruba controller based system is running a 7008 controller with 3 AP225, 1 AP215, and an AP105 for RF spectrum monitoring; this system is broadcasting 3 SSIDs. I also have a RAP3 I take on travel with me which establishes an encrypted layer 2 GRE tunnel back to my home network that allows me to extend my wireless at home to any location through the Internet.

I've used Aruba in the past as well. I'm sure I have an old RAP floating around here as well and am familiar with its tech. My old shop was a Cisco turned Aruba setup. A more immediate role was all Meraki. I use Unifi gear at home, with their USG, a few switches, three AP-AC-Pros, and two AP-M-Pros for outdoor coverage.

I'm may be right in saying we're both network engineers, whereas you seem to be more in tune with wireless networks. I traditionally haven't been. And you know what they say...get x number of engineers in a room, and you'll have x+1 solutions to a problem.

That said, generally speaking, the traffic patterns you pointed out are in themselves specialized cases. Normally, it's not that complicated.

I think we're talking about different sides of the same coin. Agreed, a proper system will do this. I've worked with Meraki more extensively, and to a smaller extent Ubiquiti, though that system leaves a lot on the table. While what you wrote is true, and in many cases, the AP placement density is generally higher than it needs to be, at least the surveys I've been a part of. Whether you have more APs at reduced power, or fewer at higher, in a non tech shop, that's somewhat irrelevant.

When you're dealing with multicast, which isn't a normal end user use case for streaming video in a corporate environment, or masses (what number would that be? 20? 40?) of RTP traffic, then agreed, it's something of a different consideration. Keep in mind, the context of this thread is about a guy in a house. Similar to what we'd done in a previous role, we'd proxy these video streams via BlueCoat. These streams weren't multicast, but in the context of an AP, I don't see much difference in multicast vs unicast in terms of number of clients receiving the stream and load on the AP. But I've also not had to deal with multicast over wireless, thus don't have a use case for it.

There again, it was taken out of context, and again, different sides of the same coin. If one AP wouldn't cut it, you'd add another one, but can still call it an issue of coverage. Regardless of whether the client can still technically see the AP, but not vice versa, in either case, the client won't connect, so you add an AP to increase coverage.

And yes, I'm familiar with WiGig.

I've used Aruba in the past as well. I'm sure I have an old RAP floating around here as well and am familiar with its tech. My old shop was a Cisco turned Aruba setup. A more immediate role was all Meraki. I use Unifi gear at home, with their USG, a few switches, three AP-AC-Pros, and two AP-M-Pros for outdoor coverage.

I'm may be right in saying we're both network engineers, whereas you seem to be more in tune with wireless networks. I traditionally haven't been. And you know what they say...get x number of engineers in a room, and you'll have x+1 solutions to a problem.

That said, generally speaking, the traffic patterns you pointed out are in themselves specialized cases. Normally, it's not that complicated.

Yes. I can tell you have networking experience. And I have focused on wireless more than my colleagues at my previous job. We're sort of talking about the same points in a different manner as you've stated.

My point is even if a single AP/wireless router can provide adequate performance for the average home, people need to start looking at doing wireless differently. With the new unified AP systems on the market and the maturity of structured wiring in new construction homes, there's really no excuse to not run a multi AP/unified wireless system. Especially with more and more wireless devices being used in a home and the increased utilization of streaming services.

I just have the mentality to have things done "right" versus half assing things. But then again, I'm one of those odd balls with networking and IT where I have a 100Gig switch and my servers are 40Gig attached.

__________________

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lups

We might not be in an agreement on Trump, but I'll be the first penis chaser here to say I'll rather take it up in the ass than to argue with you on this.